Authenticity, Self-Transcendence, and the Transcendental Precepts

[This rather brief post is primarily intended to explain some of the terminology that will be used in a series of upcoming posts.]

To be who we really are, to be our true selves, is to be authentic. Bernard Lonergan identifies authenticity as our “deepest need and most prized achievement.”¹

We achieve authenticity, Lonergan says, through self-transcendence.² It is through self-transcendence that we come to know what really is true and what truly is good – as opposed to that which only seems to be true or is only apparently good.

We achieve self-transcendence, and therefore authenticity, Lonergan says, by following what he calls the “transcendental precepts”:

1. Be attentive
2. Be intelligent
3. Be reasonable
4. Be responsible

It is only by being attentive to our experience, intelligent in understanding that experience, reasonable in judging whether our understanding is correct, and responsible in judging whether something is truly of value, that the human subject transcends his or her self.³

To be unauthentic is easy, but authenticity is hard. Authenticity, Lonergan says, “is never some pure and serene and secure possession. It is ever a withdrawal from unauthenticity, and every successful withdrawal only brings to light the need for still further withdrawals.”⁴

One would be hard-pressed to find someone who would counsel against the transcendental precepts. Still, we frequently disregard them, and this disregard is what Lonergan calls “alienation.” A doctrine that justifies alienation he calls “ideology.”⁵

(Alienation and ideology are typically the product of one or another form of bias, a complicated topic that I intend to return to in the near future.)

Notes

[1] Method, 254.

[2] Method, 104.

[3] The transcendental precepts are necessary to successfully complete the process by which we come to know what is true and what it is of value. I’ve discussed this process – which Lonergan calls “transcendental method” – before (see “Lonergan’s Three Basic Questions”), so I won’t bother explaining it here.

[4] Method, 110. I would prefer to use the term “inauthentic” rather than “unauthentic,” but for the sake of consistency with quotations from Lonergan, I’ll use his term.

[5] Method, 55.

Why the Vatican is wrong about contraception

That the Vatican is dead wrong about contraception is obvious enough to most of us. While the secular media trots out statistics claiming that, contrary to Benedict's assertion, condoms actually do help to prevent the transmission of HIV, I don't think statistics are going to change anyone's mind.

I think it's better to argue with the Vatican on the Vatican's own terms, by calling greater attention to the teaching's fatal flaw: it's actually inconsistent with the acceptance of so-called "natural family planning."

There are people who will insist that there is a moral difference between the two. That there is not, however, has been demonstrated rather decisively in a letter written by Fr. Bernard Lonergan in 1968.

I reproduce here a lengthy explanation of Lonergan's brilliant argument that I posted on this blog several years ago, in two parts:

In September 1968, the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan wrote a letter to another priest in which he explained why the official church teaching about contraception cannot accurately be said to have been derived from natural law. As he points out in the conclusion of the letter, "when there is no valid reason whatever for a precept, that precept is not of natural law" (9).

His refutation of the argument from natural law is brilliant, but some people have difficulty with some of the philosophical terminology. Below are several passages from the letter. Following each one is an explanation that can be understood, I hope, by those without an academic background in philosophy.

Lonergan begins the letter by noting

"that traditional Catholic doctrine on the sexual act followed rigorously from the position adopted by Aristotle in his De generatione animalium. That position was that the seed of the male was an instrumental cause that changed the matter supplied by the female into a sentient being...The efficient causality of the male was needed to produce the sensitive principle or soul. On that basis it was clear that every act of insemination was of itself procreative and that any positive interference was an act of obstructing the seed in its exercise of its efficient causality." (8)

The important thing to understand here is that Aristotle saw the relationship between insemination and conception as simply one of cause-and-effect. Catholic theolgians shared this view and decided that anything that hinders the cause from achieving its intended effect is unacceptable: if God intends that this cause should have that effect, it is wrong to prevent the effect from taking place.

"Two factors, however, have combined to bring about a notable change in the views of Catholic theologians on this matter. The first, of course, is the fact that the Aristotelian position is erroneous. Insemination and conception are known now to be quite distinct. The act of inseminating is not an act of procreating in the sense that of itself, per se, it leads to conception. The relation of insemination to conception is just statistical and, far more frequently than not, insemination does not lead to conception" (8).

It seems odd that people should not have seen reproduction this way sooner, given that most acts of insemination clearly do not lead to a conception. These should have been seen as distinct events, simply because the latter only occasionally follows the former. At any rate, the recognition that the relationship between insemination and conception is statistical has replaced the view that insemination is procreative in and of itself.

"So there arises the question whether this statistical relationship of insemination to conception is sacrosanct and inviolable. Is it such that no matter what the circumstances, the motives, the needs, any deliberate modification of the statistical relationship must always be prohibited?" (8).

Lonergan is asking if it there are any circumstances in which one can do something to change the statistical probability of conception taking place.

"If one answers affirmatively, he is condemning the rhythm method. If negatively, he permits contraceptives in some cases. Like the diaphragm and the pill, the menstrual chart and the thermometer directly intend to modify the statistical relationship nature places between insemination and conception" (8).

This is, I would argue, the crux of the problem, and the failure to recognise this is one of the main reasons why contraception is still being debated in the church. Supporters of the ban on contraception were deprived of the one reasonable argument they could possibly have made by the allowance of "natural family planning." So they argue unreasonably, applying made-up moral principles and concocting all varieties of fallacious arguments. But that is a subject for another day.

From Part II:

"Besides erroneous Aristotelian biology there has been another factor leading to the change in Catholic theological opinion. It is that sexual intercourse between man and wife both expresses and fosters their mutual love. This is fully acknowledged in Vatican II and also in Humanae vitae. Aristotle treated not marital intercourse but generation as common to all animals. His oversight has been corrected by contemporary phenomenological inquiry." (8)

One thing one notices when reading Aristotle's De generatione animalium is precisely the fact that humans are treated as just another kind of animal. While it is certainly the case that animals generally have sex for no reason other than procreation, it was absurd to suggest that this is the only reason humans should have sex. And yet this attitude shaped Catholic thinking for many centuries. Abandoning the Jewish view that sexual pleasure is itself a gift of God, Catholic theologians adopted the Stoic view that sexual acts that were not specifically aimed at procreation were immoral.

Jerome denied that the church appoved "of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children" and asserted that "all sexual intercourse is unclean" (Adversus Jovinianum 1.20). Augustine made the same claim (see De Bono Conjugali, esp. §6). This view was softened somewhat over time, and Aquinas held that sexual acts could be "without sin, provided they be performed in due manner and order, in keeping with the end of human procreation" (ST II-II 153.2).

The notion that sex might have purposes other than sex appears to have first been suggested by Pius XI:

"For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial rights there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved." (Casti Connubii §59)

With the Second Vatican Council, procreation was no longer the only primary end of the marital act (cf. Gaudium et Spes §48). The encyclical Humanae Vitae by Paul VI reflected this. But there was still a flaw in the reasoning of that encyclical. As Lonergan explains,

"While the Encyclical acknowledges the "unitive sense" of marital intercourse, it claims that inseparable from it there is a "procreative sense." This would be easy enough to understand if one still clung to Aristotle's biology. But on contemporary biology, if insemination may be said to be inseparable from normal intercourse, conception cannot be said to be inseparable from insemination. The discharge of two million spermatozoa into the vagina does not mean or intend two million babies. Most of the time it does not mean or intend any babies at all. The relationship of insemination to conception is not the relation of a per se cause to a per se effect. It is a statistical relationship relating a sufficiently long and random series of inseminations with some conceptions." (9)

A typical married couple will have sex many times, but only a small fraction of these will result in children. On the other hand, it is quite possible that every act could serve as "an expression and sustainer of love" (9). To say that procreation is the primary purpose of marital intercourse, or that the unitive purpose of sex is inseparable from the "procreative sense," makes no sense when one considers that sex only rarely results in conception.

Lonergan's conclusion:

"I have concentrated on what I consider the main issue. Much seems deliberately done to obscure it. The issue is not whether or not people have to have reasons for accepting the Pope's decision. The issue is that, when there is no valid reason whatever for a precept, that precept is not of natural law. Again, re dissent, Vatican II refused to oblige theologians to silence after the Pope determined controverted issues." (9)

Lonergan's point, then, is not that Paul VI was necessarily wrong to condemn contraception, but that he was wrong to claim that the teaching is derived from natural law. Natural law is morality as determined by reason. There is no reasonable argument against contraception, so there is nothing in natural law to support the condemnation of contraception.

Some defenders of the official teaching have acknowledged that the natural law argument is incorrect. Still, they insist that the magisterium could not have erred, so the condemnation will have to stand on some other grounds. Here is a quotation from John Ford (a Jesuit who was involved in drafting Humanae Vitae) and Germain Grisez:

"The Church cannot substantially err in teaching a very serious doctrine of faith or morals through all the centuries -- even through one century -- a doctrine consistently and insistently proposed as one necessarily to be followed in order to attain eternal salvation…If the Church could err as atrociously as this, the authority of the ordinary magisterium in moral matters would be stultified; and the faithful henceforth could have no confidence in moral teaching handed down by the magisterium, especially in sexual questions." ("Contraception and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium," 302-303)

This exercise in desperation theology falls immediately flat when we consider previous reversals of doctrines that had been taught for centuries: the condemnations of usury and religious freedom, as well as the teaching that slavery was morally licit, to name the most obvious examples. Should we have no confidence in the magisterium because of those?

There was a time, before Humanae Vitae, when the magisterium could have changed its teaching, and relatively little damage would have been done. Contraception would have joined usury, slavery, and religious freedom as something the magisterium used to teach differently about, and people would have been as broken up about it as they are about the earlier changes. Instead, Paul VI and (especially) JPII went the other way, condemning contraception with great vehemence and thereby staking the credibility of the magisterium on this very issue. I know I'm not the only one who thinks that will prove to have been a very grave error.

Works Cited

The Lonergan letter was published in the Lonergan Studies Newsletter, which is available in PDF format here. It's on pages 8-9 of the first issue in the file.

Judgment, Part II

The Virtually Unconditioned

Bernard Lonergan explains, "To grasp evidence as sufficient for a prospective judgment is to grasp the prospective judgment as virtually unconditioned" (Insight 305). This term might be slightly intimidating, but it's an important idea, and not a difficult one to understand.

The "conditioned" is the element to which the question for reflection is put: is it, or is it not so? "By the mere fact that a question for reflection has been put, the prospective judgment is a conditioned: it stands in need of evidence sufficient for reasonable pronouncement" (Insight 305).

So if one can say, "A is so if x, y, and z," then 'A' is a conditioned, and 'x,' 'y,' and 'z' represent the conditions. If the conditions are fulfilled, the conditioned is affirmed. It is, then, "virtually unconditioned." It is not that it does not have conditions -- in which case it would be "formally unconditioned" -- it is simply that the conditions happen to be fulfilled.

To determine if the conditions are fulfilled, we ask questions. When there are no further questions, we know we have identified the conditions, and, provided the questions we have can be answered, we will have sufficient grounds for a judgment.

Rashness and Indecisiveness

There are two opposing tendencies that sometimes hinder the process.

We say that a person is being rash when they conclude that the conditions for a particular judgment have been fulfilled without actually having apprehended that this is so. Or, they might suppose that the fulfillment of one or more conditions is sufficient, while ignoring any others that must also be fulfilled. As Lonergan explains,

it is not enough to say that the conditions are fulfilled when no further questions occur to me. The mere absence of further questions in my mind can have other causes. My intellectual curiosity may be stifled by other interests. My eagerness to satisfy other drives may refuse the further questions a chance to emerge. (Insight 309)¹

For example, someone who affirms the inerrancy of the Bible on the grounds that "God would not deceive," has made the judgment based on a single condition: the Bible is inerrant if God would not deceive. Of course, there are further relevant questions: is God responsible for the content of the Bible? Often that particular condition is ignored (or is presupposed as fulfilled, in a prior oversight), and a rash judgment is the result.

"As there is rash judgment, so also there is mere indecision" (Insight 310). This is when one postpones making a judgment, even when there is sufficient evidence to do so. Terry Tekippe, in his helpful book What Is Lonergan Up to in Insight?, summarises the difference between rashness and indeciveness as follows: "The one person rides rough-shod over any further relevant questions; the other is never satisfied that there might not be one further relevant question still to be discovered" (80).

So, between these two extremes, we find the characteristics of a correct judgment: all of the conditions are known; they are known to be sufficient; they are known to be fulfilled.

There is, as Lonergan points out, no simple formula for striking "a happy balance" between these two extremes, or for knowing when it has been reached. But he does attempt "an analysis of the main factors in the problem and an outline of the general nature of their solution":

In the first place, then, one has to give the further questions a chance to arise. The seed of intellectual curiosity has to grow into a rugged tree to hold its own against desires and fears, conations and appetites, drives and interests that inhabit the heart of man. (Insight 310)

In other words, there has to be a commitment to truth that can overcome any of the desires and fears, etc., that might drive someone to accept something other than truth.

Moreover, every insight has its retinue of presuppositions, implications, and applications. One has to take the steps needed for that retinue to come to light. (Insight 310)

So, as in the example cited earlier about the inerrancy of the Bible, allowing the presupposition that God was responsible for the content of the Bible to come to light might have prevented a rash judgment.

Conclusion

One might object that, in making judgments in everyday life, one does not go through such a rigorous thought process. Lonergan acknowledges that this is the case:

I do not mean, of course, that concrete living is to pursue this logical and operational expansion in the explicit, deliberate, and elaborate manner of the scientific investigator. But I do mean that something equivalent is to be sought by intellectual alertness, by taking one's time, by talking things over, by putting viewpoints to the test of action. (Insight 310)

And, of course, one's desire to know the truth has to supercede one's desire to maintain any particular belief, should that belief be mistaken.

Notes

[1] This "eagerness to satisfy other drives" would include, as I discussed briefly in the previous post, a desire to believe that something is or is not true, prior to evaluating whether or not it actually is.

Works Cited

Judgment, Part I

I had wanted to write about the subject of "doubt," but found it difficult to say what I wanted to say without first saying something about the subject of "judgment." Specifically, I want to discuss the stage in the cognitional process in which we make judgments of fact, when we decide whether a proposition is or is not so. As usual, I will be drawing heavily on the thought of Bernard Lonergan. (If you are unfamiliar with Lonergan's Transcendental Method, this ridiculously brief explanation [by me] might be worth reading. And, for the more philosophically-inclined, this somewhat lengthier explanation [by someone other than me] will definitely be worth reading.)

Propositions and Questions

In his book Insight, Lonergan first discusses the notion of judgment in relation to propositions. A proposition is not simply a statement that affirms or denies something, but the meaning of the statement. Thus I could have two (or more) distinct statements that affirm the same proposition. Regarding the recent World Cup, I could say, "Italy beat France," or "France lost to Italy," which are separate and distinct statements, but the proposition they communicate is the same, as both indicate nothing more and nothing less than the winner and loser of that particular event.

Now with regard to propositions there are two distinct mental attitudes: one may merely consider them, or one may agree or disagree with them. Thus, what I write I also affirm; but what you are reading you may neither affirm nor deny but merely consider. (Insight 296)

So a proposition might simply be an object of thought, but it can also be the content of an act of judging, that is, "the content of an affirming or denying, an agreeing or disagreeing, an assenting or dissenting" (Insight 297).

Lonergan next relates the notion of judgment to questions, of which he identifies two classes: questions for intelligence, and questions for reflection. To the data of experience -- that is, the scraps of information that we encounter through our senses and in our consciousness -- we put the question, "what is it?" This is the question for intelligence (or understanding). It culminates in a concept. But this is not yet "knowledge," because our concept could be mistaken. So to our concept we put the question for reflection: "is it so?" And this is where judgment comes in.

To the question of reflection there are two possible answers ("yes" or "no"), but one might decide that one cannot answer at all.

Evidence

Why would one not answer? The most obvious reason is that one might decide that one does not have sufficient evidence to ground a judgment. And this may in fact be the case. Other times, however, there is more than sufficient evidence to ground a judgment, but we avoid making the appropriate judgment because, for example, it may conflict with what we want to believe.

That which we want to believe exercises a strong influence on our judgments if we are not careful. Not only does it sometimes prevent us from making judgments where there is clearly sufficient evidence to do so, it can also lead us to make an irrational judgment, such as when the evidence indicates "yes" and we answer "no" (or vice-versa). Think of the certainty with which people insisted that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even prior to the U.S. invasion, and one can see how people who really want to believe something will magically "find" evidence to support their judgment, even when such evidence does not, in fact, exist.

Criminal trials, particularly when they involve celebrities, are another example. Many people have no problem deciding for themselves if the defendant is innocent or guilty, even before a trial begins, and it is clear that something other than evidence is ruling their judgment. I would be surprised, for example, if the people who were most certain that Michael Jackson was innocent of the charges brought against him were not also huge Michael Jackson fans.

Read Judgment, Part II

Works Cited

Understanding and Believing

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (251)

Is it true that “one can’t believe impossible things”? Actually, it’s quite possible, and I imagine a lot of people do it all the time. If it’s not possible, then my own belief that it is possible would prove it wrong. Or something like that.

But the insight in this passage is not that impossible things are unbelievable, but that if I believe that something is impossible, I cannot at the same time believe that it is possible. That would be a contradiction.

One might argue that people sometimes do believe contradictory things, but I would argue that “believe” is probably too strong a word to describe what they are doing. One can assent to two contradictory things at once, but only if one is unaware of the contradiction. There has to be an absence of understanding about one or both things to which one has given one's assent. A contradiction is by its very nature unintelligible. All one can understand is that there is nothing to be understood.

Assent is Not Belief

I don’t think mere “assent” should really be considered “belief.” One can assent without understanding, and can therefore assent to something that is unintelligible. One can assent to the notion of a “square circle,” for example. But one cannot believe that such a thing exists, if one understands the words “square” and “circle” to mean what they are commonly understood to mean.

Actually, that brings up a different problem: the relationship between language and meaning.

Language and Meaning

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (268-269)

This passage highlights two important facts about language. The first is the arbitrary relationship between a word and that which the word refers to. To answer Alice's question, yes, you can make a word mean whatever you want it to mean. But you won't be understood by anyone who doesn't understand it in the same way. Which is the second important fact: verbal communication requires mutual understanding. Alice did not understand what Humpty Dumpty meant by the word “glory,” and so failed to catch his meaning – until he told her, that is.

It seems to me that both the arbitrariness of language and the necessity of mutual understanding have serious implications for Christianity, so I'm going to explore those concepts a little more.

When I say language is arbitrary, I simply mean that words and sentences have no necessary connection to that which they refer. Thus, the words "horse," "cheval," "cavallo," "Pferd," and "equus" can all refer to the same animal. But they only refer to that animal to the people who understand that that is what they refer to.

Maybe that sounds obvious, but it seems to me that language is sometimes thought to have properties that contradict this. For example, there are dogmas that are, apparently, incomprehensible to the human mind. And yet, they are nevertheless expressed in statements that, even though they can't be understood, are nevertheless asserted to have meaning.

The Incarnation

Many Christians insist that Jesus is both fully "human" and fully "divine." Or they will say that he has both a "divine nature" and a "human nature." But I don't know too many people who are willing to explain precisely what they mean by either or both of those terms. It is usually shrugged off as a "mystery," but I think this is just evading the issue.

If the doctrine of the Incarnation is true, then there can be no conflict between a human and a divine nature existing in one person. But I think it is fair to say that there is a conflict, at least as most people understand the terms "human" and "divine." Personally, I can not think of a way to reconcile the two without radically redefining at least one of them. And if a word has to be redefined in such a drastic way, wouldn’t it make sense to just create a new word? Why insist on using a word in such a manner that is so contrary to the way it is commonly understood? All it does it create confusion. [1]

It seems to me that the whole notion of an incomprehensible mystery being expressed in language relies on a rather naïve "correspondence theory of truth." What I mean by that is the theory that a proposition is true if it corresponds to reality.

It seems to be implied that dogmatic propositions correspond to facts, whether they are understood or not. But the fact is not contained within the proposition. It is communicated by the proposition, and only to those who understand it. If you don’t understand a proposition, communication has not taken place, and that which it affirms (or denies) is no closer to you than if you had never heard the proposition at all.

Notes

[1] The traditional solution of predicating every characteristic of divinity to one nature, and every characteristic of humanity to another nature, and then asserting that these two natures are united in one “person,” raises the problem of how to define “person.” For example, what does it mean to say that one “person” can have “two wills”? (Actually, it doesn’t mean anything, because a “will” is not a thing that one “has,” as was supposed by the “faculty psychology” of an earlier age. What is attributed to the will is simply the operations of a conscious-intentional subject, specifically on what Bernard Lonergan calls the fourth level of conscious-intentionality, i.e., the level of responsibility. In a previous post I described the operations of the first three levels, i.e., the empirical (experiencing), intellectual (understanding), and rational (reflecting and judging, etc.). I didn’t really talk much about the fourth level, so I’ll do that sometime in the near future.)

At any rate, even if we accept the concept of a reified “will,” I fail to see how a “person” could have more than one. I don’t think there is an intelligible concept there.

Works Cited

Horizons and Conversion

So far I've spent a lot of time emphasising philosophy, and I imagine it might appear that I have a semi-rationalist perspective. I think, though, that I have a healthy respect for the limits of the discursive intellect, and that is what I want to talk about today. In doing that, I want to explain two more concepts derived from Lonergan.

Horizons

The literal definition of the word "horizon" is "the bounding circle, the line at which the earth and sky appear to meet. This line is the limit of one's field of vision" (Method 235). The extent of what one can see is determined by where one is standing. Lonergan uses the term metaphorically to refer to the bounded "scope of our knowledge, and the range of our interests":

In this sense what lies beyond one's horizon is simply outside the range of one's knowledge and interests: one neither knows nor cares. But what lies within one's horizon is in some measure, great or small, an object of interest and of knowledge. (Method 236)

When differences between two horizons are due to, say, occupational differences, we say the difference is complementary. These don't contradict each other, they are simply different because people in different situations in life have to know different things, and will inevitably have different interests. Horizons can also change over time, either on a personal or communal level, and these difference are genetic. Finally, horizons can also be opposed dialectically -- "What for one is true, for another is false. What for one is good, the other is evil" (Method 236).

Conversion

Dialectical oppositions between two people's horizons are due to the absence in one or both of intellectual, moral, and/or religious conversion. Conversion is a shift in one's viewpoint, from an inadequate one, to an adequate one, resulting in a new horizon.

I can't really do justice to this rather large topic in such a short space, so I'm simply going to offer some thoughts on why the discursive intellect is of limited usefulness in religious matters.

Obviously when we make judgments of fact, we draw on what we already know -- or think we know. But we don't all know the same things, and I might very well think I know something while you think you know the opposite. So we see the limits of the discursive intellect. We can only reason with what we know. And if we don't have a clear view of what we know, so much the worse.

There are questions -- religious questions -- that cannot be answered by the intellect. The intellect, says D.T. Suzuki, "first made us raise the question which it could not answer by itself, and...therefore it is to be put aside to make room for something higher and more enlightening":

For the intellect has a peculiarly disquieting quality in it. Though it raises questions enough to disturb the serenity of the mind, it is too frequently unable to give satisfactory answers to them. It upsets the blissful peace of ignorance and yet it does not restore the former state of things by offering something else. Because it points out ignorance, it is often considered illuminating, whereas the fact is that it disturbs, not necessarily always bringing light on its path. (Zen Buddhism 8)

Suzuki points to the history of philosophy -- the constant building up and tearing down of philosophical systems, one after the other -- as proof of this limitation. This is okay as far as philosophy goes, and it is necessary and inevitable that humans should engage in philosophical inquiry, but "when it comes to the question of life itself, we cannot wait for the ultimate solution to be offered by the intellect, even if it could do so" (8).

Mystical experience is a radical form of conversion. In my opinion, Lonergan's three types of conversion is incomplete. Religious conversion sets the bar too low, including non-mystical conversions. This is not to say that religious conversion, as he describes it, is unimportant, but there is another, more profound kind of religious conversion that comes about through mystical experience.

"The essence of Zen Buddhism," says Suzuki, "consists in acquiring a new viewpoint on life and things generally" (83). From this new point of view, "life assumes a fresher, deeper, and more satisfying aspect":

This acquirement, however, is really and naturally the greatest mental cataclysm one can go through with in life. It is no easy task, it is a kind of fiery baptism, and one has to go through the storm, the earth-quake, the overthrowing of the mountains, and the breaking in pieces of rocks. (83)

Or, as Jesus put it:

"For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Mt 7.14)

Works Cited

The Difference Between "Knowing" and "Believing"

This is a pretty basic issue, and I should have covered it earlier. In an earlier post I explained Lonergan's explanation of how we attain genuine, objective knowledge, but I neglected to explain Lonergan's definition of "belief."

In that earlier post I explained how it is true that when people refer to a place called "Texas," I can be reasonably certain that they are referring to a real place, even though I've never been there. The fact is, while I can conceive of an alternative explanation to explain the various references to the state of "Texas" that I've encountered in my life, I cannot reasonably affirm that this explanation is true, or even plausible. When a person "grasps the evidence for excluding alternative views, then he does not believe but knows" (Lonergan, Method 42).

Obviously there are a lot of things that we affirm as true, even though we are aware that alternative views exist, and that there is evidence to support them. This latter point is very important -- the mere existence of alternative views is not enough to downgrade an affirmation from knowledge to belief. There are, after all, people who deny the Holocaust, or the Armenian genocide, but these views are easily excluded by intelligent, reasonable, and responsible people. It is only when one does not grasp the evidence for excluding alternative views that a particular affirmation is considered a belief.

Non-Religious Belief

"Belief," as Lonergan understands it, is not only important in religion, but also plays a large role in "most other areas of human activity," including science (42). Scientists, after all, rely heavily on the work of other scientists. As Lonergan puts it, "it would be a mistake to fancy that scientists spend their lives repeating one another's work" (43). They can attain "immanently generated knowledge" in their own work, but this will likely be founded upon "beliefs" about the validity of the work of others.

Knowing and Believing in Religion

Sometimes people will affirm something as true, and will strongly believe that they have "evidence for excluding alternative views." This does not necessarily mean that they "know," just that they think they know. What are called "religious beliefs" are almost invariably beliefs, but there are people who believe that they can affirm these with certitude. Why do they do this?

St. Thomas Aquinas argued that "it is dangerous to dispute in public about the faith, in the presence of simple people, whose faith for this very reason is more firm, that they have never heard anything differing from what they believe." (ST II-II 10.7). It is difficult to imagine someone having "never heard anything differing from what they believe," even in the most religiously homogeneous societies, but when alternative beliefs are held only by people outside of one's society, it is easy enough to demonise those people and thereby dismiss there beliefs as a consequence of their moral perversity, or some other serious failing.

The fact that Jewish people have denied Christian claims about the divinity or "messiahship" of Jesus has often been explained by Christians as a sign of their "perfidiousness." So Christians raised in such an environment have, in their experience, encountered two types of data relevant to the issue: Christian claims that Christian beliefs were true, and Christian claims that heresies and non-Christian beliefs (or the non-Christian failure to affirm Christian beliefs) are attributable to the moral failings of heretics and non-Christians.

If a person raised in such a environment never encountered any reason to question this view, they might think that they "know" that their beliefs are true, because as far as they are concerned, they have evidence for excluding alternative views.

On the other hand, Christians living in a pluralistic society knows that non-Christians do not believe differently because of some moral failing. The "evidence" for Christian views is hardly decisive, and it is not the case that non-Christians cannot point to similar "evidence" to support their own views. In the absence of any decisive evidence for the "truth" about these matters, knowledge is not to be had. All we can know is that we cannot "know," we can only believe.

Belief and Faith

Religious belief has the same structure as non-religious belief, but, as Lonergan says, "now the structure rests on a different basis, and that basis is faith" (118). The distinction Lonergan makes between "belief" and "faith" is rather different from the official teaching of the church:

Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. (emphasis in original; CCC §150)

The word "inseparably" would seem to suggest that Lonergan's distinction between the two is implicitly excluded. Indeed, Lonergan notes that, in making this distinction, "we must acknowledge the existence of an older and more authoritative tradition in which faith and beliefs are identified." Nevertheless, he says making this distinction is justified because in doing so "we are departing, not from the older doctrine, but from the old manner of speech" (123).

I think I'm going to return to this topic with a fuller treatment in the future.

Works Cited

Zen and Christian Mysticism

D.T. Suzuki, calling Zen "the ultimate fact of all philosophy and religion," explains that

Zen is not necessarily the fountain of Buddhist thought and life alone; it is very much alive also in Christianity, [Islam], in Taoism, and even in positivistic Confucianism. What makes all these religions and philosophies vital and inspiring, keeping up their usefulness and efficiency, is to the presence in them of what I may designate as the Zen element. (Zen Buddhism 111)

This is a classic example of what is generally called theological "inclusivism": my religion is true, your religion is useful if it brings you close enough to the truth of my religion. I have a bit of a problem with this kind of theology (which I'm going to get around to blogging about someday), but today I'm going to explain why I don't think this does justice to Zen, and obscures that part of Zen that the adherents of other religions can most benefit from.

In my last post I wrote, I think Christian mystics often affirm, rather uncritically, an understanding of the experience that includes elements that are not present in the experience itself. If Zen teaches us anything, it is to be judicious in our affirmation of whatever it is we understand from the experience.

Interpreting Mystical Experience

In his chapter on interpreting texts in Method in Theology, Bernard Lonergan describes what he calls the Principle of the Empty Head:

According to this principle, if one is not to "read into" the text what is not there, if one is not to settle in a a priori fashion what the text must mean no matter what it says, if one is not to drag in one's own notions and opinions, then one must just drop all preconceptions of every kind, attend simply to the text, see all that is there and nothing that is not there, let the author speak for himself, let the author interpret himself. In brief, the less one knows, the better an exegete one will be. (157)

Lonergan affirms that these contentions are right in trying to avoid a common problem, the tendency people have "to impute to authors opinions that the authors did not express," but they "are wrong in the remedy that they propose, for they take it for granted that all an interpreter has to do is to look at a text and see what is there" (157).

This principle, I think, is operative in Suzuki's contention that "the Zen element" is present in other religions. In Zen, he seems to be saying, the experience is pure. Other religions begin with this pure experience, but pollute it with ideas that are foreign to it.

A Note About Terminology

A "pure experience" is what I would call simply a "mystical experience." St. John of the Cross defined this experience as "pure contemplation," which is ineffable, as opposed to other experiences in which "the communications the soul receives are particular, such as visions, feelings, and so on" (Dark Night 2.17.5). I would not consider the latter type as a "mystical experience." When I say "mystical experience," I am referring to what St. John calls "pure contemplation."

This experience is basically the same as that which Suzuki calls satori. That this experience is expressed in different ways by people in different religions has to do with the interpretation of the experience rather than the experience itself.

All Experience is Mediated

It is not the case that in Zen, one has a pure experience, adds nothing to it, and therefore attains pure knowledge, while in non-Zen traditions, one has a pure experience, adds foreign elements to it, and therefore attains impure knowledge. Suzuki never says this in quite this way, but this is what I take him to mean (especially in his description of Christian mystical language on p. 106).

The knowledge we attain from experience is always mediated by our understanding and judgment. We understand the experience more or less correctly. We are more or less reasonable when we judge whether our understanding is correct.

Zen is not exempt from this, as I think Suzuki suggests. But it does urge us to be more judicious in our judgment of whether or not our experience is understood correctly. We cannot forego interpretation, but we can avoid reading into the experience something that is not there. I think Christian mysticism would benefit from doing this.

Words Cited

Zen in the Light of Lonergan's Cognitional Theory

One problem with which I have been preoccupied lately is the compatibility between the cognitional theory of Bernard Lonergan and the "intuitive" knowledge attained in Zen, as described by D.T. Suzuki, perhaps the best-known interpreter of Zen in the West.

For a time it seemed to me that there was no conflict between them. Then it definitely seemed to me as though there was, and I was prepared to side more with Suzuki than Lonergan. Now I'm starting to see that the problem is in Suzuki's expression of his understanding of Zen.

So this is what I am going to do today: first, I'm going to offer a somewhat brief explanation of Suzuki's description of the satori experience (sometimes also known as "kensho"), which he describes as "the Alpha and Omega of Zen Buddhism" (84). Then I'm going to explain why that description is inadequate in the light of Lonergan's cognitional theory. Then I'm going to offer what I think is a more adequate description of Zen.

Satori According to Suzuki

By personal experience it is meant to get at the fact at first and not through any intermediary, whatever this may be. Its favourite analogy is: to point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon; a basket is welcome to carry our fish home, but when the fish are safely on the table why should we eternally bother ourselves with the basket? Here stands the fact, and let us grasp it with the naked hands lest it should slip away -- this is what Zen proposes to do. As nature abhors a vacuum, Zen abhors anything coming between the fact and
ourselves. (Suzuki, 8-9)

For Suzuki, the experience of satori is characterised, above all, by immediacy. Zen, he says, appeals "directly...to the facts of personal experience and not to book-knowledge" (7). The experience must be "independent of any ideational representation" (13).

Satori, as Suzuki describes it, actually covers a lot of different things. It is at once the "the Zen experience" itself (84), as well as the knowledge one attains by having the experience (103-104).

This might seem plausible enough, but in the light of Lonergan's cognitional theory, it can be shown to be somewhat simplistic.

Satori in the Light of Lonergan's Cognitional Theory

Lonergan noted that the word "experience...commonly is used as a synonym for knowledge," and so someone is described as having "experience" in a particular field, they are understood as possessing some kind of knowledge in that field (116).

Experience by itself, however, does not yield knowledge. To put that another way, knowledge cannot be attained by a pure, unmediated experience -- something I think Suzuki seems to claim. The act of coming to know something is invariably more complicated than this.

Zen may "abhor" anything that comes "between the fact and ourselves," but it cannot eliminate it. What Suzuki calls "the fact" is what Lonergan would call "merely potential" (117). Not until it is understood correctly and affirmed as true does "the fact" become something known by the human subject.

"The fact" is "merely potential" until it is understood. Satori, as Suzuki points out, involves an insight. He is correct in saying that that this insight is not "reached by reasoning," but I think he errs when he says that it "also defies...conceptualization" (103). I think what it "defies" is not "conceptualization" but "adequate conceptualization" -- if what was experienced was not conceptualised, there would be nothing to affirm and therefore no knowledge attained.

Insight always culminates in some kind of concept, a point I made in my last post. Without this concept, the person would retain nothing of any value from the experience. The concept is what remains to be talked about. Zen, as I understand it, seeks not a non-concept, but a concept that draws from the experience alone, without reading into it anything that is not there. This is one thing that often afflicts Christian mysticism -- as Suzuki himself points out (see 106-107).

Zen vs. Christian Mysticism

I think the difference between Zen and (most) Christian mysticism can actually be explained with reference to Lonergan's cognitional theory.

The experience leads to an insight, which leads to a concept. The concept then has be affirmed or denied. I think Christian mystics often affirm, rather uncritically, an understanding of the experience that includes elements that are not present in the experience itself. If Zen teaches us anything, it is to be judicious in our affirmation of whatever it is we understand from the experience.

Suzuki notes the absence in Zen (vis-à-vis Christian mysticism) of references "to such personal and frequently sexual feelings and relationships as are to be gleaned from these terms: flame of love, a wonderful love shed in the heart, embrace, the beloved, bride, bridegroom, spiritual matrimony, Father, God, the Son of God, God's child, etc. We may say that all these terms are interpretations based on a definite system of thought and really have nothing to do with the experience itself" (emphasis added; 106).

This is not the only difference, of course, but I'll discuss this a little more in my next post.

Towards a More Adequate Expression

I don't think it can be asserted that Zen culminates in an immediate experience of reality, whereby intuitive knowledge is attained without conceptualisation. What Zen provides is an approach to understanding the experience.

Suzuki calls Zen "the ultimate fact of all philosophy and religion" (111). He writes,

Zen is not necessarily the fountain of Buddhist thought and life alone; it is very much alive also in Christianity, [Islam], in Taoism, and even in positivistic Confucianism. What makes all these religions and philosophies vital and inspiring, keeping up their usefulness and efficiency, is to the presence in them of what I may designate as the Zen element. (111)

I understand what he means by this, but I think a more adequate (and modest) description is needed. Which will be the subject of my next post.

Works Cited

Lonergan, Bernard. A Third Collection. Frederick E. Crowe, ed. New York: Paulist Press, 1985.

Suzuki, D.T. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki. William Barrett, ed. 1956. New York: Image Books, 1996.

Lonergan, More Precisely

In my last post I explained why Bernard Lonergan said that genuine, objective knowing is the result of nothing other than one's attentive experience, intelligent understanding, and reasonable and responsible judgment.

He called this invariant pattern of operations "transcendental method" -- a term used by several others (Kant, Maréchal, Rahner, etc.), but not in quite the same way. Today I'm going to describe the stages of understanding and judgment with greater precision.

The Level of Understanding

Whenever we encounter any kind of data -- whether data of sense or data of consciousness -- it comes to us first as mere scraps of information. The prompts the question for understanding -- "what is it?"

The question for understanding is answered with an insight. Insight is a sudden release from the tension of inquiry, when we get the point, when we see the solution. The insight culminates in a concept. Distinguishing between insights and concepts is not easy, but I tend to think of the insight as the event, and the concept as the product of this event.

The Level of Reflection

Judgments occur on the level of reflection. Like the level of understanding, this level begins with a question -- the question for reflection -- "is it so?"

The answer to the question for reflection is simply "yes" or "no." This is where we make a judgment about the accuracy of our concept that was the answer to the question for understanding.

Between the question for reflection and the judgment comes the reflective insight -- when it becomes clear to us whether there is sufficient evidence to affirm our concept or not. If not, we have to reformulate our concept until we find one we can affirm.

We therefore find six distinct stages within the two levels:

Level of Understanding

1. Question for Reflection - "What is it?"
2. Insight
3. Concept

Level of Reflection

1. Question for Reflection - "Is it so?"
2. Reflective Insight
3. Judgment

An Example

Imagine you are entering your house through the front door, and you hear an unfamiliar telephone ring. You wonder -- "what is it?"

The first thing that pops into your head is that it could be the TV. You've had an insight culminating in a concept.

But you're not sure if this is right. No one else is home right now, so there's no reason why the TV would be on. This is confirmed when you get into the living room, and find that the TV is, in fact, off. You have to conclude that, no, it is not the TV.

Meanwhile, the phone is still ringing, and it is clear that it's coming from the kitchen. Then you remember -- you got a new phone, and you hadn't heard it ring yet. This is a second insight, culminating in a second concept. In this case the judgment is almost instantaneous -- just as soon as you thought about it, you realised that it is true. But you still go through the process.

Inverse Insights

Sometimes we do not come to an understanding because we realise that there is nothing to understand. These are called inverse insights. Imagine someone was to ask you, "how do you draw a square circle?" When you realise that this is not possible, you have had an inverse insight. In this case, the fault lies not in the answer, but in the question.

Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions"

"What am I doing when I am knowing? Why is doing that knowing? What do I know when I do it?" (Lonergan, Method in Theology 25)

A person's answer to these questions will be their cognitional theory, their epistemology, and their metaphysics. Bernard Lonergan has his own answers for these, which I'm going to talk about today, because I think he happens to be right, and because these are essentially the foundation of everything else that I'm going to write.

Lonergan is one of those philosophers who gives a lot of people headaches with his clear-as-mud writing style, so it is perhaps not surprising that his ideas are not as widely known as they probably ought to be. But the stuff I'm dealing with today is surprisingly simple, and once it has been understood, it seems completely obvious. Whether or not I can explain it in a single post remains to be seen, but that won't stop me from trying.

Cognitional Theory: "What am I doing when I am knowing?"

To answer this we need to pay some attention to the structure of our cognitive process. The first step must involve experience, because whatever else knowing might be, it cannot take place in the absence of experience. All knowledge begins with the experience of some kind of data -- whether data of sense, or data of consciousness.

The data we experience is itself just scraps of information. If we are attentive to this data, we may or may not have an insight. That is, we will come to some understanding of what it is, we will form a concept, we will see how things hang together in an intelligible way. And then we will make a judgment about whether or not this understanding is, in fact, the case.

In order to do this successfully, we have to experience attentively, understand intelligently, and judge reasonably and responsibly.

This is not usually something I am conscious of doing at the time it happens, but when I look back at the things that I know, I will find that this process invariably took place. But more on that later.

Epistemology: "Why is doing this knowing?"

Lonergan is sometimes accused of "subjectivism." The problem, though, is that whenever we think, reason, decide, reflect, judge, etc., we do so as subjects. There is no getting around that. The error made by some of Lonergan's critics is in seeing "objectivity" as opposed to "subjectivity." If this is the case, then epistemic "objectivity" is not possible -- a conclusion that some people have affirmed.

Lonergan, however, insists that objectivity is not a matter of non-subjectivity, but is rather "attained only by attaining authentic subjectivity." (Method 292). In other words, objectivity is not attained outside of our subjectivity (which would be impossible, given that we can only know as subjects), but within it. Our subjectivity is "authentic" when we are attentive in our experiencing, intelligent in our understanding, and reasonable and responsible in our judging.

Metaphysics: "What do I know when I do it?"

If "knowing" is the result of experience, understanding, and judgment, it follows that what can be known is experience-able, intelligible, and affirmable. This is not "being" in its fullness, but "proportionate being": that is, "being that is proportionate to human knowing." That "being" might extend beyond this can be affirmed by intelligent understanding and reasonable judgment, so in addition to "proportionate being" there is also "transcendent being."

How do we know that any of this is true?

Lonergan's epistemology and metaphysics are easy enough to grasp once one has understood his cognitional theory, but perhaps it is not clear what he meant by this. I will explain with some examples.

I might ask myself how I know that there is a place called "Texas." I've never been there, but I've heard about it, and I'm reasonably certain it exists -- but how do I know this?

In my experience, I've certainly encountered a lot of data suggesting that there is such a place. I've read about it. I've seen pictures of it. I know people who claim to have been there. I've watched sporting events that were allegedly played there. Early in this process I gained an understanding of what this name "Texas" refers to. I developed a concept of this place.

Does this necessarily mean it exists? Not really, because I can also have concepts of fictional places. But I made a reasonable judgment. This didn't happen consciously, but when I look back, I can see that it must have happened.

How do I know it was reasonable? I simply need to look at the evidence that led to the formation of the concept. I could explain it by judging that "Texas" does in fact exist, or I could try and come up with some other explanation for the data. I could suppose that there is a massive conspiracy involving countless numbers of people. Everything I've read, and all the images I've seen, could all be fabricated evidence. The people I know who claim to have been there could have been among the conspirators, or maybe they were tricked into believing that they had been there. The sporting events that supposedly took place there could have actually taken place somewhere else -- it could be that all of the people who were present were also among the conspirators. The more I think about it, the more ludicrous it becomes. For me to judge that Texas does not exist would require me to completely abandon my reasonableness.

The only reasonable judgment I can make is that Texas does, in fact, exist. And I am justified in claiming to know this objectively.

Cognitional Structure as Self-Justifying

I might also consider what would be involved if I was to deny Lonergan's description of the cognitional process. Lonergan called it the "method," but this term is unnecessarily confusing -- as Lonergan himself often pointed out, when people hear "method," they tend to think "recipe" -- so for now I'll just call it "the concept."

If I was unaware of the concept, I would not be in a position to deny it. So I would have to have some experience, either by reading about it, or having someone explain it to me. Experience is therefore necessary.

In having this experience, I could understand the concept, or fail to understand it. If the latter, I would either know that I don't understand it, or I would think that I've understood it, without actually having done so. If I know I didn't understand it, I could not reasonably deny it. If I understood it incorrectly, what I would be denying is the misunderstood concept, not the real concept. So to deny it would require understanding.

So all that remains is judgment. The concept, remember, is that we know by experience, understanding, and judgment. But to deny it would be to make a judgment. So whether I accept it or deny it, I'm proving that its true, because either way, I'm making a judgment!

Anyone who doesn't think it's true either hasn't heard about it, didn't understand it, or is contradicting themselves by verbally denying that they are doing what they are doing.

Isn't that exciting? I sure think so.

Self-Appropriation

Through the process of attending to my own interior operations, I take possession of myself as a subject. Lonergan called this process "self-appropriation." It is through this process that we discover the foundation of our knowledge.

Lonergan said that his 1957 book Insight: A Study of Human Understanding was essentially written to help people through this process. It's over 800 pages long. It's not necessary to read it for this process to take place, of course, but I mention this to explain why I don't imagine that anyone has become "self-appropriated" simply by reading my brief summary here.

It actually took me several months before I grasped not only what Lonergan was saying, but why it's so significant. I had the good fortune of studying with a professor who happens to be a recognised expert in Lonergan's thought. Obviously this helps, but it isn't necessary, and it's not enough: the truth of Lonergan's answers to the "three basic questions" can ultimately only be discovered by examining one's own conscious-intentional operations (experiencing, understanding, judging) and their contents. And if you should come up with better answers than Lonergan, I'd love to hear 'em.

Works Cited

Lonergan, Bernard. Method in Theology. 1971. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.

Recommended Reading

Grace, R. Jeffrey. "The Transcendental Method of Bernard Lonergan." Online.

Meynell, Hugo A. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan. 2nd Edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.

Tekippe, Terry J. What is Lonergan Up to in Insight? : A Primer. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1996.

Also worth checking out is Mark Oppenheimer's fun Boston College Magazine article "Beautiful Mind," which is about Lonergan and his independent-thinking non-disciples (which is what Lonergan told his followers to be, although some of them haven't listened).

What I'm Doing Here

As I said a couple of days ago, I decided to take a new direction with this blog. In this post I'm going to explain, in very broad strokes, what I plan to do. First I am going to look at part of the philosophical rationale for this project, drawing from the work of the Jesuit philosopher/theologian Bernard Lonergan, whose thought I will return to often in the future. Then I will explain how this relates to the enterprise known as "progressive Christianity," to which this blog represents a small contribution.

The Problem of Authenticity

In a pair of lectures published in his Third Collection, Lonergan discussed the problem of authenticity in religion. In our time, he says, an "agonizing question" has arisen, "namely, how can one tell whether one's appropriation of religion is genuine or unauthentic and, more radically, how can one tell one is not appropriating a religious tradition that has become unauthentic." (130)

Authenticity is a problem on two levels. On a minor level, there is the problem of authenticity in the human subject – that is, the individual – in relation to the tradition. On a major level, there is the problem of authenticity of the tradition itself. (120)

On a minor level, individual people might "ask themselves whether or not they are genuine Catholics or Protestants, Moslems or Buddhists," etc. They might conclude that they are, and they may be correct – but they might also be incorrect. They may have appropriated some of the ideals demanded by the tradition, but there are others in which they have diverged from the tradition.

Whether from selective inattention, or a failure to understand, or an undetected rationalization, the divergence exists. What I am is one thing, what a genuine Christian is is another, and I am unaware of the difference. My unawareness is unexpressed. Indeed, I have no language to express what I really am, so I use the language of the tradition I unauthentically appropriate, and thereby I devaluate, distort, water down, corrupt that language. (121)

Note that this is not something that people do consciously. Those who unauthentically appropriate their tradition, as Lonergan describes it, are not aware of this fact.

This can also happen on a major level, when the "unauthenticity of individuals generates the unauthenticity of traditions." When a tradition falls away from it’s original ideals, the best an individual within the tradition can do is "authentically realize unauthenticity. Such is unauthenticity in its tragic form, for then the best of intentions combine with a hidden decay." This makes authenticity particularly difficult for individuals:

Not only have they to undo their own lapses from righteousness but more grievously they have to discover what is wrong in the tradition they have inherited and they have to struggle against the massive undertow it sets up. (121)

"Tradition" is not itself the problem. The problem is "unauthenticity in the formation and transmission of tradition. The cure is not the undoing of tradition but the undoing of its unauthenticity." (121-122)

Lonergan points out that we could not rid ourselves of tradition, even if I felt it was desirable to do so:

It is only through socialization, acculturation, education, that we come to know that there is such a thing as tradition, that it has its defects, its dangers, its seductions, that there are evils to be remedied. To learn as much is already to be a product of the tradition. (122)

Lonergan points out that any changes we might bring about "will always just be another stage of the tradition…whose motives and whose goals – for all their novelty – will bear the imprint of their past." (122)

The Progressive Enterprise

The question of what constitutes the "authentic" Christian tradition has been fought over since the time of the apostles. Even if Christians were to agree that the teachings of Jesus should be held as normative, the question over what constitutes the authentic teachings of Jesus would remain to be answered. The realisation that the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament cannot necessarily be accepted as reliable has been accepted by some of us, to varying degrees, and rejected by others. I have nothing really to say to people who fall into the latter category. The belief that Jesus actually said all of the words attributed to him in the New Testament cannot be argued, it can only be asserted dogmatically.

Even those of us who recognise that the gospels are the product of a developing tradition are not necessarily on a common ground. After all, this view is affirmed by the magisterium of the church, as expressed in the "Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation," Dei Verbum (n. 19). But they explicitly reject the notion that Jesus’s teaching was in anyway distorted during this process. They insist that the teachings of the magisterium cannot in anyway represent a divergence from the original teachings of Jesus because they are themselves the sole authentic interpreters of his teachings. Therefore the teachings of the magisterium represent "authentic" Christianity.

The arguments that are given for this are inevitably circular: only if Jesus himself gave the magisterium the authority to be the sole interpreter of his teachings would they, in fact, have this role. If he did not, then they cannot rightfully claim this role – but they insist that anyone who makes such an assertion is incorrect, because they alone can interpret Jesus's intentions, having been given this role by Jesus himself.

I reject circular arguments on principle. I see no reason to make an exception for this one. "Unauthenticity" crept into the Christian tradition early on, as different groups made competing claims to be the sole true heirs of the apostolic faith, and its been with us ever since. Those of us who have recognised this are faced with a problem: what if we want to authentically appropriate the Christian tradition, but find that the tradition itself is unauthentic? Undoing this "unauthenticity" represents a massive enterprise -- much larger, I think, than is often recognised by most self-described "progressive" Christians.

The process of "deconstructing" the problematic aspects of the tradition has been going on for a long time, and has borne much fruit. The process of "reconstructing" it has been somewhat less successful. I feel that I have my own small contribution to make to both of these, and that is what this blog is going to be for. Starting now.

Works Cited

Bernard Lonergan. A Third Collection. Frederick E. Crowe, ed. New York: Paulist Press, 1985.

Lonergan on Contraception, Part II

In my last post I described the first of two factors that Bernard Lonergan claims precipitated the change in thinking about contraception among Catholic theologians. Now I will describe the second factor.

"Besides erroneous Aristotelian biology there has been another factor leading to the change in Catholic theological opinion. It is that sexual intercourse between man and wife both expresses and fosters their mutual love. This is fully acknowledged in Vatican II and also in Humanae vitae. Aristotle treated not marital intercourse but generation as common to all animals. His oversight has been corrected by contemporary phenomenological inquiry." (8)

One thing one notices when reading Aristotle's De generatione animalium is precisely the fact that humans are treated as just another kind of animal. While it is certainly the case that animals generally have sex for no reason other than procreation, it was absurd to suggest that this is the only reason humans should have sex. And yet this attitude shaped Catholic thinking for many centuries. Abandoning the Jewish view that sexual pleasure is itself a gift of God, Catholic theologians adopted the Stoic view that sexual acts that were not specifically aimed at procreation were immoral.

Jerome denied that the church appoved "of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children" and asserted that "all sexual intercourse is unclean" (Adversus Jovinianum 1.20). Augustine made the same claim (see De Bono Conjugali, esp. §6). This view was softened somewhat over time, and Aquinas held that sexual acts could be "without sin, provided they be performed in due manner and order, in keeping with the end of human procreation" (ST II-II 153.2).

The notion that sex might have purposes other than sex appears to have first been suggested by Pius XI:

"For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial rights there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved." (Casti Connubii §59)

With the Second Vatican Council, procreation was no longer the only primary end of the marital act (cf. Gaudium et Spes §48). The encyclical Humanae Vitae by Paul VI reflected this. But there was still a flaw in the reasoning of that encyclical. As Lonergan explains,

"While the Encyclical acknowledges the "unitive sense" of marital intercourse, it claims that inseparable from it there is a "procreative sense." This would be easy enough to understand if one still clung to Aristotle's biology. But on contemporary biology, if insemination may be said to be inseparable from normal intercourse, conception cannot be said to be inseparable from insemination. The discharge of two million spermatozoa into the vagina does not mean or intend two million babies. Most of the time it does not mean or intend any babies at all. The relationship of insemination to conception is not the relation of a per se cause to a per se effect. It is a statistical relationship relating a sufficiently long and random series of inseminations with some conceptions." (9)

A typical married couple will have sex many times, but only a small fraction of these will result in children. On the other hand, it is quite possible that every act could serve as "an expression and sustainer of love" (9). To say that procreation is the primary purpose of marital intercourse, or that the unitive purpose of sex is inseparable from the "procreative sense," makes no sense when one considers that sex only rarely results in conception.

Lonergan's conclusion:

"I have concentrated on what I consider the main issue. Much seems deliberately done to obscure it. The issue is not whether or not people have to have reasons for accepting the Pope's decision. The issue is that, when there is no valid reason whatever for a precept, that precept is not of natural law. Again, re dissent, Vatican II refused to oblige theologians to silence after the Pope determined controverted issues." (9)

Lonergan's point, then, is not that Paul VI was necessarily wrong to condemn contraception, but that he was wrong to claim that the teaching is derived from natural law. Natural law is morality as determined by reason. There is no reasonable argument against contraception, so there is nothing in natural law to support the condemnation of contraception.

Some defenders of the official teaching have acknowledged that the natural law argument is incorrect. Still, they insist that the magisterium could not have erred, so the condemnation will have to stand on some other grounds. Here is a quotation from John Ford (a Jesuit who was involved in drafting Humanae Vitae) and Germain Grisez:

"The Church cannot substantially err in teaching a very serious doctrine of faith or morals through all the centuries -- even through one century -- a doctrine consistently and insistently proposed as one necessarily to be followed in order to attain eternal salvation…If the Church could err as atrociously as this, the authority of the ordinary magisterium in moral matters would be stultified; and the faithful henceforth could have no confidence in moral teaching handed down by the magisterium, especially in sexual questions." ("Contraception and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium," 302-303)

This exercise in desperation theology falls immediately flat when we consider previous reversals of doctrines that had been taught for centuries: the condemnations of usury and religious freedom, as well as the teaching that slavery was morally licit, to name the most obvious examples. Should we have no confidence in the magisterium because of those?

There was a time, before Humanae Vitae, when the magisterium could have changed its teaching, and relatively little damage would have been done. Contraception would have joined usury, slavery, and religious freedom as something the magisterium used to teach differently about, and people would have been as broken up about it as they are about the earlier changes. Instead, Paul VI and (especially) JPII went the other way, condemning contraception with great vehemence and thereby staking the credibility of the magisterium on this very issue. I know I'm not the only one who thinks that will prove to have been a very grave error.

Works Cited

Lonergan on Contraception, Part I

In September 1968, the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan wrote a letter to another priest in which he explained why the official church teaching about contraception cannot accurately be said to have been derived from natural law. As he points out in the conclusion of the letter, "when there is no valid reason whatever for a precept, that precept is not of natural law" (9).

His refutation of the argument from natural law is brilliant, but some people have difficulty with some of the philosophical terminology. Below are several passages from the letter. Following each one is an explanation that can be understood, I hope, by those without an academic background in philosophy.

Lonergan begins the letter by noting

"that traditional Catholic doctrine on the sexual act followed rigorously from the position adopted by Aristotle in his De generatione animalium. That position was that the seed of the male was an instrumental cause that changed the matter supplied by the female into a sentient being...The efficient causality of the male was needed to produce the sensitive principle or soul. On that basis it was clear that every act of insemination was of itself procreative and that any positive interference was an act of obstructing the seed in its exercise of its efficient causality." (8)

The important thing to understand here is that Aristotle saw the relationship between insemination and conception as simply one of cause-and-effect. Catholic theolgians shared this view and decided that anything that hinders the cause from achieving its intended effect is unacceptable: if God intends that this cause should have that effect, it is wrong to prevent the effect from taking place.

"Two factors, however, have combined to bring about a notable change in the views of Catholic theologians on this matter. The first, of course, is the fact that the Aristotelian position is erroneous. Insemination and conception are known now to be quite distinct. The act of inseminating is not an act of procreating in the sense that of itself, per se, it leads to conception. The relation of insemination to conception is just statistical and, far more frequently than not, insemination does not lead to conception" (8).

It seems odd that people should not have seen reproduction this way sooner, given that most acts of insemination clearly do not lead to a conception. These should have been seen as distinct events, simply because the latter only occasionally follows the former. At any rate, the recognition that the relationship between insemination and conception is statistical has replaced the view that insemination is procreative in and of itself.

"So there arises the question whether this statistical relationship of insemination to conception is sacrosanct and inviolable. Is it such that no matter what the circumstances, the motives, the needs, any deliberate modification of the statistical relationship must always be prohibited?" (8).

Lonergan is asking if it there are any circumstances in which one can do something to change the statistical probability of conception taking place.

"If one answers affirmatively, he is condemning the rhythm method. If negatively, he permits contraceptives in some cases. Like the diaphragm and the pill, the menstrual chart and the thermometer directly intend to modify the statistical relationship nature places between insemination and conception" (8).

This is, I would argue, the crux of the problem, and the failure to recognise this is one of the main reasons why contraception is still being debated in the church. Supporters of the ban on contraception were deprived of the one reasonable argument they could possibly have made by the allowance of "natural family planning." So they argue unreasonably, applying made-up moral principles and concocting all varieties of fallacious arguments. But that is a subject for another day.

In the next post I will look at the second factor, alluded to above, that has brought about a change in Catholic thinking on this matter.

Go to Part II

The quotations are from a letter dated September 6, 1968, and published in the Lonergan Studies Newsletter 11 (1990): 8-9. That newsletter can be read in pdf format here. Just scroll down to page 8 to find the letter.